Articles which survey and map out the increasingly significant discipline of medievalism; and explore its numerous aspects. This latest volume of Studies in Medievalism further explores definitions of the field, complementing its landmark predecessor. In its first section, essays by seven leading medievalists seeks to determine precisely how tocharacterize the subjects of study, their relationship to new and related fields, such as neomedievalism, and their relevance to the middle ages, whose definition is itself a matter of debate. Their observations and conclusions are then tested in the articles second part of the book. Their topics include the notion of progress over the last eighty or ninety years in our perception of the middle ages; medievalism in Gustave Doré's mid-nineteenth-century engravings of the 'Divine Comedy'; the role of music in Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' films; cinematic representations of the Holy Grail; the medieval courtly love tradition in Jeanette Winterson's 'The Passion' and 'The Powerbook'; Eleanor of Aquitaine in twentieth-century histories; modern updates of the 'Seven Deadly Sins'; and Victorian spins on Jacques de Voragine's 'Golden Legend'.
Author(s): Karl Fugelso (ed.)
Publisher: D. S. Brewer
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 306
City: Cambridge
Editorial Note Karl Fugelso xi
I: Defining Medievalism(s) II: Some More Perspective(s)
Medievalism as Fun and Games / Veronica Ortenberg West-Harling 1
Medievalism and Excluded Middles / Nickolas Haydock 17
'Medievalitas Fugit': Medievalism and Temporality / Richard Utz 31
Medievalists, Medievalism, and Medievalismists: The Middle Ages, Protean Thinking, and the Opportunistic Teacher-Scholar / E. L. Risden 44
Living with Neomedievalism / Carol L. Robinson and Pamela Clements 55
Tough Love: Teaching the New Medievalisms / Jane Chance 76
II: Interpretations
Is Medievalism Reactionary? From between the World Wars to the Twenty-First Century: On the Notion of Progress in our Perception of the Middle Ages / Alain Corbellari 99
Gustave Doré’s Illustrations for Dante’s 'Divine Comedy': Innovation, Influence, and Reception / Aida Audeh 125
Soundscapes of Middle Earth: The Question of Medievalist Music in Peter Jackson’s 'Lord of the Rings' Films / Stephen Meyer 165
Now You Don’t See It, Now You Do: Recognizing the Grail as the Grail / Roberta Davidson 188
From the Middle Ages to the Internet Age: The Medieval Courtly Love Tradition in Jeanette Winterson’s 'The Passion' and 'The Powerbook' / Carla A. Arnell 203
New Golden Legends: Golden Saints of the Nineteenth Century / A. Simmons 229
A Remarkable Woman? Popular Historians and the Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine / Michael Evans 244
The New Seven Deadly Sins / Carol Jamison 265
Notes on Contributors 289
